Apologies to the group. My response yesterday was intermingled...

Apologies to the group. My response yesterday was intermingled with the quotes from sachmodog. I have attempted to repost with correct separation.  I wont repost if I muck it up again!

Agreed entirely.  The first crack in this only appeared in hindsight when the newly appointed Martin-Williams (announced as head of the new compliance committee) was announced to have resigned after approx. 8 weeks, with no information provided as to why.
Second crack was when the news of problems hit The Age in mid-Sept  and became the subject of the first question of the day to the commissioner of ASQA, who just happened to be making the opening address at a national conference of VET providers.

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I became interested in the market in relation to the VET providers out here and established my first trading account. The horse I am still backing is languishing, mostly as a side-effect of the ongoing-scandals I reckon.  My money is still there waiting for signs of life.  I won’t name them because last time I did I was told that oi was throwing a porkchop lol.
I am commenting as I reckon that this new market segment needs some industry knowledge added to the mix. We certainly aren’t getting any detail from market announcements. As to the media, one could be excused for thinking the entire sector is a dud, which it certainly is not.

• ASQA With respect to notice of cancellation of registration, there are regulatory processes that must be followed; including opportunity for response to audit and opportunity to rectify. There’s a full regulator announcement about this at http://asqa.gov.au/news-and-publica...-phoenix-institute-of-australia-pty-ltd1.html It’s pretty impossible to comment on whether sufficient time or effort was put into rectification but from my recall of the ACO announcements there was additional discussion/interaction between the parties after the first rectification period. How far apart from each other we will presumably find out from the AAT hearing decision in due course.

• With respect to DET’s Vet Fee Help funding, there really isn’t enough info in the public domain to be determinative as to whether all possibilities were exhausted. However we do know that the process took around 4 months from initial announcement of deferral through to cancellation.

We also do not know how much weighting was applied to the tuition assurance matter, with respect to DETs determination of contract breach. It would have been good to see some reporting of the court case held this week but in its absence we await the announcement following the court’s decision.

• With respect to the ACCC case set down for October; the full ACCC announcement is at http://www.accc.gov.au/media-releas...ing-joint-investigation-with-nsw-fair-trading Given that the ACCC seem to be seeking redress (ie refunds for all affected students which may be in excess of 9000  students/17000 courses (with each course  from $18-20,000) depending upon how you read the announcement, it probably hasn’t been realistic for ACO to be offering up the type of undertaking normally permitted by the ACCC.  So  as to interactions between ACO and ACCC, it is probably a moot point.

Additionally ACO announcements indicate that they strongly reject the proposition of the ACCC.   Incidentally ACCC have commenced similar actions against at least three other providers and I believe they were suggesting before Xmas that there are more on the way.

I don’t think it’s a clear assumption at all, given the predominant approved assurance scheme in Australia has been through a private provider scheme, best described as a co-op where remaining providers assume responsibility for failing providers. In other words the assurance generally comes from other members of the co-op.  Exactly what system ACO have in place is not in the public domain.   There is some comfort (to students anyway)  to know that they continue to support 22000 students at present (according to recent market  announcement).

As to  legal actions or payment suspension impinging upon planned assurance, it is a clear and present risk in the world of VET that government funding models change, sometimes frequently and sometimes massively.  This is mentioned in the ACO prospectus (and every other IPO prospectus for this sector)  Accordingly tuition assurance needs to be a function of every students enrolment and any experienced VET manager would or should be aware of this.

It is of course possible that of the 50 plus percent of every revenue dollar ascribed to other working capital items  (in the quarterly market report) is in fact the squirrelling of this money.  I just cant see it in the bank accounts. Someone may enlighten us.

I can see where you were heading here, but really the extension to the analogy is a little weak.  The act of failing registration testing ie audit  is rather different than a competent but unlicensed practitioner doing a good job outside the licensing regime.  It is effectively determining that the practitioner is not capable of doing a good job. AAT will have more to say I guess.

I asked a question on 15 February in this thread around ACO’s apparent continued advertising of services apparently in the face of the AAT orders not to.   They certainly state that they are not accepting enrolments at this point.  My question was to elicit some response as to whether they are meeting both conditions of their AAT stay order.

According to the ACCC the “some” was up to 9000 at $18-$40000 a pop (over $100 million all up). Yours and my money actually was provided by the government in good faith. No not murder, but life-changing in the event that default judgements start arriving at some time in the future or ability to borrow money for other purposes potentially prevented in future years.

This is fair comment. We do not have all the facts here. And besides, speeding by a little bit isn’t really speeding is it? tongue in cheek)

Most importantly and I believe I have stated this before,  ACO have stated that they will vigorously defend

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Agreed, and again this goes to the heart of the matter which we discussed above. What was done in the pursuit of exhausting reasonable possibilities; what was the level of alleged breaches etc.

Agreed, and I think discussed above. However the ACCC action is entirely separate from the regulator action regarding registration (Vet speak for operational licence)

This is pretty speculative. Until the tuition assurance matter is played out this is unlikely to get any light of day, in line with Hartsuyker’s announcement after Aspire etc collapsed last week.

I’m inclined to agree that many loans were never going to be paid back - the question is; was this a function of the program/policy, the operators or both.

To my knowledge the VET Fee Help loan stuff is well over $6 billion in government loans. That would be a helluva lot for any government to bring back into the liability part of the balance sheet. For me I would restate that we need a Commission of inquiry-  we’ve had around 10 ministers responsible for the sector over the past 6-7 years and there is egg on the face of governments of both persuasions with regard to policy rollout.

Agreed entirely. (addition) Today there are many many high performing TAFEs and Private providers.   The growth of our private market was at least in part a response to  an apparenelty unresponsive (to industry) TAFE sector in the 80's and 90's

I agree.
My analysis is mine alone, so happy to see alternate points of view. Your feedback was great as it helped me test my assumptions.